May Martin’s Sewing Bible: 40 years of tips and tricks. May Martin

      A sewing machine comes with a couple of basic ‘feet’ which you can use to do lots of different processes. However, more specialised feet are available that you may want to consider investing in – or putting on your wish list! – as your skills develop. Using specific feet for certain techniques can improve the quality and accuracy of your stitching.

      Standard Machine Feet

      Standard foot: This is the foot that you’ll use for most of your sewing. The sole is fairly flat with a wide gap for working zigzag as well as running stitches.

      Buttonhole foot: This either has grooves underneath for the beads of the buttonhole to go through or a plastic or metal sliding gauge.

      Zipper foot: Your machine will have a standard zipper foot. These do not always stitch piping well, so you may wish to buy an adjustable one.

      Specialised Machine Feet

      Here are some of my favourite machine feet and how to use them. Many different kinds are available to help with every conceivable task – I have twenty-five feet that I have collected for my machine over the years.

      Invisible zipper foot: Designed specially to sew an invisible zip, as I’ve shown in my Shift Dress, this has two grooves underneath to accommodate the coils of the zip while sewing in place.

      Overcasting foot: This has a bar or bars and brushes to the right of the foot. The bar slackens the tension on the top thread and prevents the edge of the seam puckering up when neatening the edges of seams. If you can, use this instead of a standard foot for zigzag neatening as well as for overcasting.

      Blind-stitch foot: This foot helps to guide the fabric when working a blind-stitched hem. It can also be adjusted or positioned to aid edge stitching.

      Open embroidery foot: Ideal for appliqué or embroidery, as the wide opening at the front of the foot gives a clear view of what you are stitching, while the groove under the sole of the foot helps accommodate the denser types of stitching used in embroidery.

      Walking or even-feed foot: This foot has a set of teeth on the underside that connect with the teeth on your machine, gripping both top and bottom layers of fabric when sewing and feeding them evenly through the machine. Excellent for sewing long seams on curtains or for helping to control the layers when quilting. Some models also come with a guide that fits in the back of the foot to aid parallel stitching.

      Stitch-in-the-ditch foot: This foot comes with a blade in the middle of the foot. Sit this blade on the seam line and it will follow the join precisely. This foot would be perfect for guiding the stitching on the waistband of my Pencil Skirt or for the binding on the Child’s Smock Apron.

      Quarter-inch piecing foot: Position the blade of this foot over the edge of the fabric and machine. Perfect for quilting!

      Sewing-Machine Needles

      There are different types of machine needle for different applications – for instance, if you are sewing jersey, you wil need a ballpoint needle to avoid splitting the yarn. Once you have chosen which type, then choose a suitable size for the fabric. I've included a chart overleaf showing the different types of machine needle and their areas of application. There are many other specialist kinds of needle that you can purchase, but the ones in the list will cope with all the projects in this book.

      Needle Size

      The needle ‘gauge’ indicates the size of the needle: the higher the number, the thicker the needle. Needles come in European and American sizing, hence the two numbers on the packet (e.g. 80/12). For the majority of your sewing projects, a universal needle size 80/12 will be fine. I have lots of different-sized needles for use in different projects. These days I tend to buy packets containing just one size rather than a mix of different sizes – it’s easier to keep track of needles that way as I can no longer read the size on the shaft of the needle! Even if your eyesight is super-sharp, it’s still worth putting a sticker on your sewing machine giving the size of machine needle you are currently using.

      Top Tips

      Change your needle at the end of every major project. Machine needles gradually lose their sharpness with continued use.

      Don’t put used needles in the same packet as new ones.

      With any project it is essential to test stitch and check the needle size on a double-folded piece of the fabric.

      Needle Types & Uses

      Bobbins

      The bobbin is the spool of thread inserted in the base of your machine that provides the lower thread for machine stitching. You’ll need to read your machine manual for correct winding and insertion of the bobbin, but here are a few additional tips:

       Use the correct bobbin for your make and model of machine.

       Use the same thread for both bobbin and top thread to create balance when stitching. A different type of thread on the bobbin can result in uneven stitches. (There are occasions when this rule does not apply – for example, when an uneven effect is required in machine embroidery.)

       It’s best to wind a couple of bobbins before starting a big project so that you can avoid having to stop and wind a bobbin while in the middle of sewing.

      Tension

      One of my students recently referred to dealing with and understanding tension as the ‘dark arts’! I thought this was really amusing as it can seem a mysterious business and any problems annoyingly hard to identify. Here’s a brief explanation of how tension works in a sewing machine and what to do if things go wrong.

      How Tension is Controlled

      Imagine that your top thread and your lower, bobbin thread are on either side of a tug-of-war team. For the perfect tension, you need your threads to be balanced and held, or ‘tugged’, evenly through the tension paths on the top and the bottom of your machine. The stitch should appear the same on both sides of the fabric,

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